Sprint Qualifying for the Dutch Grand Prix lived up to expectations and proved to be an extremely close-fought affair, with particularly small gaps in the final part.

At the end of the session, in which the top four cars were separated by less than a tenth of a second, Charles Leclerc was classified third and will therefore start tomorrow's race from the second row, while Lewis Hamilton will start on row 4, from seventh spot.

Both SF-26s comfortably made it through the first two stages of Sprint Qualifying, run as per the regulations, on Medium tyres. In SQ3, on Soft tyres and with effectively just one flying lap available to everyone, Charles stopped the clocks in 1'11"622, good enough for third, just one hundredth of a second behind Lando Norris and five hundredths off George Russell's pole position time. Lewis however was unable to put together his lap and, with a time of 1'12"191, had to settle for seventh place.

This evening, the team will prepare in detail for tomorrow's Sprint race. It will provide a useful indication ahead of Sunday's Grand Prix. As usual, once the Sprint race is over, parc fermé conditions will be lifted so that the teams can work on the cars in preparation for Grand Prix Qualifying.

Charles Leclerc: I was quite comfortable with the car since this morning. It's always good to come back from a long break with such a feeling, and it means we have taken good steps in the right direction.

I'm satisfied with my lap, it was a good effort for the team and we are in the mix at the start of tomorrow's Sprint. We will see about the race pace, as the tricky conditions this morning were a bit of a limitation in terms of understanding where everyone truly stands. So far, it's a positive start to the weekend.

Lewis Hamilton: I felt good in free practice and we were happy with the adjustments we were making throughout the day. Unfortunately, the car felt different during Sprint Qualifying, which made the session more challenging, so we'll carefully review the data overnight to understand the reasons behind this and identify where we need to improve. We'll be working hard to be as competitive as possible in the Sprint tomorrow and to have a strong qualifying session ahead of the race on Sunday.

Fred Vasseur: Today Charles delivered a good performance, qualifying just a few hundredths off pole. It was a very good lap in which he was able to to put everything together. The session proved more difficult for Lewis after a very strong start in free practice this morning. He didn't manage to put a good lap together in SQ3 and we need to work on the balance of the car to do better tomorrow.